Tier 16 Trinket Analysis for Brewmasters

Here are the trinkets you should look into for in Patch 5.4, Siege of Orgrimmar. I’ve included boring tank trinkets, full dps trinkets, and my personal favorite, the trinkets that land somewhere in the middle. At the bottom I give my best attempt at a “Best-in-Slot” list, if that’s all you’re here for.

Pure Tank Trinkets

What’s with all of these stamina trinkets, after two tiers of hardly any?

Vial of Living CorruptionPassive: +2939 StaminaEquip: Increases the cooldown recovery rate of six of your major abilities by 20% for the normal version, more or less depending on item level. For Brewmasters, those abilities are: Guard, Fortifying Brew, Zen Meditation, Avert Harm, Transcendence: Transfer, Clash. Effective for tank roles only.Source: Siege of Orgrimmar – Malkorak

Analysis: The normal mode version will bring your Guard cooldown to 25 seconds, Fortifying Brew and Zen Meditation to 2.5 minutes, Clash to 29.2 seconds, and Transcendence: Transfer to 20.8 seconds. The cooldown reductions for most of these abilities aren’t terribly useful because they’re not abilities we use as soon as they become available — they’re abilities we use when we need them. The one possible exception is Guard, and that’s only if you tend to use it all the time. Since most Brewmasters save it, that leaves this trinket only as situationally useful.Final Decision: Moderate priority. Get it if you often use Guard as soon as it’s available. In most cases, not great.

Analysis: It’s another stamina trinket, which can be good or bad depending on your needs (though for most of us, it’s undesirable). The on-use AoE reduction can be marginally useful when used intelligently. However, AoE damage rarely threatens tanks unless it’s a cleave, so the usefulness depends on the encounter.Final Decision: Low priority. Get it for encounters with heavy, predictable AoE damage. Otherwise, the on-use is worthless.

Analysis: I feel bad about this trinket because with a crit on-use, it was clearly made for leather tanks. But with the stamina, it’s still not all that attractive. That is a helluva lot of crit, though. Final Decision: Moderate priority. Get if if you often find yourself in need of a stamina boost for additional smoothness.

Analysis: Dodge is unattractive to us Brewmasters, so this trinket does not start out well. The healing is interesting, and I can see it being useful against DoTs, but there are usually better things out there.Final Decision: Low priority.

Analysis: The base form of this trinket is a much lower ilvl than what you’d find in T15 and T16, but the mastery isn’t bad. The dodge on use is not very attractive, however.Final Decision: Low priority. The mastery/agility alternative to this trinket (Discipline of Xuen) will almost always be a better choice, but this one isn’t bad for pure defenses, especially if you don’t have other options.

Pure DPS Trinkets

These trinkets offer next-to-nil bonuses to avoidance or smoothness, but they’re good for solely increasing your personal damage.

Haromm’s TalismanProc: Your attacks have a 14% chance to trigger Multistrike, which deals instant additional damage to your target equal to 33% of the original damage dealt.Proc: Your attacks have a chance to grant you 11761 Agility for 10 sec. (Approximately 0.92 procs per minute)Source: Siege of Orgrimmar – Kor’kron Dark Shaman

Analysis: In my personal tests, I found this trinket to be good for pure dps, though it doesn’t offer much for tanking besides random agility. “Multistrike” is basically an extra attack.Final Decision: Moderate priority (but don’t steal it from your damage dealers if it’s best for them). Good for single target dps, but I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re pushing your personal damage because it doesn’t provide much in the way of survival.

Sigil of RampageProc: Your attacks have a 3.11% chance to Cleave, dealing the same damage to up to 5 other nearby targets.Proc: Your attacks have a chance to grant you 11761 Agility for 15 sec. (15% chance, 85 sec cooldown)Source: Siege of Orgrimmar – Spoils of Pandaria

Analysis: This trinket contributed decent single target dps, and pretty good multi-target dps. It will probably need more than three targets to be better than Haromm’s Talisman, but you can always hope to have both equipped. Again, this trinket does not have any tanking value except for the random agility proc.Final Decision: Moderate priority (but don’t steal it). Good for AoE dps, and the agility proc is okay for single target. Does not provide much survival or damage reduction, so only use when dps is a higher priority.

Middle Ground

These trinkets are often a combination of “tanky” stats and dps stats, and are your best bet for general use.

Analysis: Just like Bad Juju, this trinket provides one of my favorite combinations of mastery and agility. Reforge to crit for dps and avoidance, or keep it at mastery for survival.Final Decision: High priority. Great general-use trinket that provides decent dps and survival all in one.

Thok’s Tail Tip /Prismatic Prison of Pride / Purified Bindings of ImmerseusPassive: Amplifies your Critical Strike damage and healing, Haste, Mastery, and Spirit by 7%. The crit bonus is similar to the DPS Meta gems. After that, our haste and mastery are boosted by 7%.Proc: Your attacks have a chance to grant you 11761 Strength for 20 sec. (15% chance, 115 sec cooldown)Source: Siege of Orgrimmar – Thok the Bloodthirsty

Analysis: While this is obviously a strength trinket, it’s still surprisingly good for our dps and defenses. With some SoO upgrades, we could have around 25k mastery + haste (in a mastery-focused build), which would give 1750 total secondary stats. That alone makes it pretty close to Ticking Ebon Detonator, and on top of that we have the excellent crit damage bonus for dps. If you’re a crit Brewmaster, the stat bonuses will be far less, though the dps bonus will be slightly more effective.Final Decision: High priority (but if you love your strength-using teammates, I hear it’s really good for them). Preferable to use in a mastery build.

Rune of Re-OriginationPassive: 1467 AgilityProc: When your attacks hit you have a chance to trigger Re-Origination. Re-Origination converts the lower two values of your Critical Strike, Haste, and Mastery into twice as much of the highest of those three attributes for 10 sec.Source: Throne of Thunder – Lei Shen

Analysis: Why yes, this lovely Tier 15 trinket is back. To use it defensively, you’ll want to make mastery your highest stat. If you don’t want to commit fully to a mastery build, try to keep mastery and crit relatively balanced, but with crit slightly lower (and haste lower yet). If you want to use it offensively, make crit your highest. Keep in mind that you will be harder to heal if you choose the crit proc.Final Decision: High priority. With mastery, this trinket will give you a mini-shield wall when it procs and remain a great defensive trinket throughout the tier.

Bad JujuPassive: +1467 MasteryProc: When your attacks hit you have a chance to gain 7333 Agility and summon 3 Voodoo Gnomes for 20 sec.Source: Throne of Thunder – Council of Elders

Analysis: The mastery is strong either as is or reforged into crit/exp. Agility proc remains basic but decent for dps.Final Decision: Moderate priority. With the reliable mastery and strong agility proc, this trinket will remain attractive until you’re lucky enough to find suitable replacements.

Analysis: I don’t always like a capped stats on my trinkets, since that limits your ability to swap on the fly, but there’s no denying this trinket is still pretty good. Excellent for DPS with some useful tanking stats.Final Decision: Moderate priority. Keep it until you find a better replacement, which might take a while.

Analysis: This trinket starts out as 496 ilvl, which is quite a bit lower than the others and even those in Tier 15. However, it has very good stats in agility and mastery. The upgraded version is really good, and will probably outpace the Tier 15 trinkets.Final Decision: Moderate priority. Really good if your monk doesn’t have Tier 15 trinkets or if you can get the upgraded version.

Best In Slot

I don’t really like giving Best In Slot lists for tanking trinkets because I want to encourage my readers to think on their toes and change trinkets around based on availability and needs. So instead, I’ll provide a few situations to give you an idea on when to swap trinkets.

I’ve ranked these trinkets according to my own testing, which didn’t cover all situations. So with that in mind, these “Best-In-Slots” are merely recommendations. If you see a reason to deviate, you probably should.

General Moderate Physical Damage Intake where DPS is Sort of Important